Featured local reader for the Annual AWP Cave Canem off site event.

In-Person Registration
Live-stream Registration

Experience Cave Canem’s signature off-site reading featuring a selection of Fellows from around the country.

 ONLINE EVENT

Please join us next week, Monday March 15 @ 12:30pm for the start of the Medicine, Health, and Representation Speaker Series. Dr. Bettina Judd, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington will be giving a poetry reading from her book, Patient., which draws on historical evidence of 19th-century medical experimentation on Black women, scholarly explorations of the body and the archive, and personal medical history. We hope you will join us for this poetic exploration of issues related to race, gender, and science. Please feel free to distribute widely and encourage your students to attend. Full schedule and flyer below. Please register via Zoom to receive meeting links. 

Medicine, Health, and Representation Speaker Series - Spring 2021 Schedule

Monday, March 15, 2021, 12:30-1:30 PM PST [ZOOM LINK to register]
“Poems from Patient.”
Dr. Bettina Judd
Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies, University of Washington

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art literature and music to develop feminist thought. Judd will be reading selections from her poetry collection, Patient.:

 

“...Patient., is about recovery in many senses: recovery of the subjectivity of several historical figures, through the recovery, reconstitution, and telling of their stories—among them Anarcha Wescott, Betsey Harris, Lucy Zimmerman, Joice Heth, Saartjie Baartman, and Henrietta Lacks, who were infamously “patients” or subjects of inspection and “plunder” by, among others, J. Marion Sims, the controversial gynecologist, and P.T. Barnum, showman and circus founder. Sims (and the speculum) and Barnum are the featured antagonists in many of these flawlessly empathetic poems, but an unnamed speaker who adds a contemporary voice to the lyric chorus implicates those in charge of her care during a present-day hospital stay at a teaching hospital—suggesting the linkage of modern medical treatment to the traumas vulnerable Black women, enslaved and not, suffered at the hands of unethical scientists and physicians in earlier eras. In the collection’s opening poem, the speaker reckons, “…verdicts come in a bloodline” and she determines “to recover” from “an ordeal with medicine” by “learn[ing] why ghosts come to me.”  She ends her testimony by asking, “Why am I patient?”  (Read that line in however many nuanced ways you want.)  In this profoundly layered witnessing, the subject might be “in the dark ghetto of my body,” or “an idea of metaphors that live where bodies cannot.”  Yet even as Judd vividly evokes the precise brutalities visited upon the Black female body and psyche—letting us see and hear women who “quieted/ broke into many pieces”—these poems also speak of “shedding something, ” “another kind of sloughing.” Ultimately, Patient. enacts a healing and move toward wholeness, recovery of, as one speaker puts it, “spirit [t

ONLINE EVENT

Reading with Derrick Weston Brown, JP Howard, and I.S. Jones for Anastacia Renee

12:30-2:00PM PST / 3:30-5:00PM EST

You can use this link to register for it.

In conjunction with Anastacia-Renée’s solo exhibition (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts, four of her most beloved poets will read their works in engagement with and in response to her exhibition. This reading will be interspersed with the poets’ reflections on the exhibitions and the ideas that fuel their practices.

FEATURED POETS:

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA from American University. He is the founding Poet-In-Residence of Busboys and Poets and a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA workshops. His work has been published in Colorlines and Tidal Basin Review. His first collection of poems Wisdom Teeth was released in 2011 by PM Press. His second collection, On All Fronts, was published by Upper Rubber Boot Press in March 2019. He resides in Mount Rainier, MD.

JP Howard is an educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP was a featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and was a Split this Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism finalist. JP is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press and has received fellowships and/or grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary, Astraea and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY-based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Slowdown podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, Anomaly, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, Muzzle Magazine, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is one of three current general Poetry Editors for Women's Studies Quarterly (WSQ) and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online.

I.S. Jones is a queer American Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. I. S. hosts a month-long online workshop every April called The Singing Bullet. I.S. coedited The Young African Poets Anthology: The Fire That Is Dreamed Of (Agbowó, 2020) and served as the inaugural nonfiction guest editor for Lolwe. She is a Book Editor with Indolent Books, Editor at 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, freelances for Complex, Earmilk, NBC News THINK, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart Pulp, The Rumpus, The Offing, Shade Literary Arts, Blood Orange Review, Honey Literary and elsewhere. Her work was chosen by Khadijah Queen as a finalist for the 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at University of Wisconsin–Madison where she was the Inaugural 2019–2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient. Her forthcoming chapbook Spells Of My Name was selected by Newfound for the Emerging Poets Series.

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought through affective registers. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Her poems and essays have appeared in Feminist Studies, Torch, The Offing, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. (2014) which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize in 2013.

Explore this collection of recommended reading for the exhibition available for purchase at the Museum Store’s website.

Privacy Statement: The event will be hosted on Zoom, an online platform. If joining by video, your image and/or name may be visible to others. When logging in, you may choose to hide your video, or to rename yourself using a pseudonym, if you would like to protect your privacy. While attendees are encouraged to join from a private location where discussion will not be overheard, confidentiality is not guaranteed. This session may be recorded and used by the Frye Art Museum in its sole discretion.

I will be hosting weekly readings with Auburn Avenue featuring the authors whose work is featured in the special issue on GENDER that I guest edited.

Curated by Anastacia-Renée With Bettina Judd, Helen K. Thomas and Jourdan Imani Keith

Free

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
-Audre Lorde

Speak to Me! is an intergenerational reading series showcasing poets and writers curated, hosted and moderated by Anastacia-Renee, Seattle Civic Poet (Seattle Office of Arts & Culture). This special installment of the series celebrates the birth, life, and work of Audre Lorde.

The line-up for this event features stellar poets from near and far! Join us for readings by Derrick Weston Brown, Bennie Heron, Bettina Judd, Quenton Baker, and Anastacia-Renee.

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing, from American University, and his work has appeared in such literary journals as The Little Patuxent Review, Colorlines, The This Mag, and Vinyl online. He worked as a bookseller and book buyer for a bookstore operated by the nonprofit Teaching for Change; founded The Nine on the Ninth, a critically acclaimed monthly poetry series; and was the 2012-2013 Writer- In-Residence of the Howard County Poetry Literary Society. Currently, he is a participating DC area author for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation’s Writers-in- Schools program. He is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and resides in Mount Rainier, Maryland. His debut collection of poetry, Wisdom Teeth, was released in April 2011 on Busboys and Poets Press/PM Press. You can follow him on social media on Facebook and on Instagram @theoriginalDerrickWestonBrown as well as his author website www.DerrickWestonBrown.com

Bennie Herron was born in San Diego, CA to a blue-collar family. He had a challenging but fulfilling childhood rooted in unconditional love; this childhood is the undercurrent of his writing and social advocacy. He always knew and believed that one way he could transcend negative circumstances was through education, which would allow him to be a part of the solution regarding issues that plagued his community and the world alike. After obtaining a Bachelors in Psychology at San Diego State University, he later went on to obtain a masters in social work. Most recently he received his MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in contemporary poetry from National University. In 2012, his first full-length poetry collection greens was published by Tintavox Independent Press. In February 2018, he released a collection of prose and poems titled word to mother with West Vine Press. The poems are a reflection of his attempt to add on and never take away.

Bettina Judd, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women’s creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop Black feminist thought. Her collection of poems on the history of medical experimentation on Black women titled Patient. won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize.

Quenton Baker is a poet and educator from Seattle. His current focus is anti-blackness and the afterlife of slaver. His work has appeared in Jubilat, Vinyl, Apogee, Pinwheel, Poetry Northwest, The James Franco Review, and Cura and in the anthologies Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters and It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Southern Maine and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is a 2017 Jack Straw fellow and is the recipient of a James W. Ray Venture Project award from Artist Trust. His first collection, This Glittering Republic, came out from Willow Books in 2016.

Anastacia-Reneé is Civic Poet of Seattle and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is a hybrid genre writer, workshop facilitator and multivalent performance artist. She is the author of four books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.), (Gramma Press), Answer(Me) (Argus Press), and 26 (Dancing Girl Press) and her poetry, prose and fiction have been published widely.